by Patrick L. Cahalan

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fine art

Here’s a smattering of paintings that I got (semi) decent shots of while I was at the Vatican. Starting with one of my personal favorites, the School of Athens. If you’re got the time, go on Google and look up which Athenians were modeled on which famous Italians of the time … a hint, the big fish, center left, was based on Leonardo da Vinci.

This is a MUCH older piece, from centuries before the Italian Renaissance. You can see it in the two-dimensional character of the work; clearly perspective hadn’t been developed to the same level at that point.

And here’s a piece that I liked as well. Not all that interesting in its own right, but I like the use of color and perspective in it.

Pope Somebody-or-Other

Chow Time

Another classic, the Last Supper – except that this one is by Raphael, not da Vinci (his is in Milan). This, and a lot of these, were real SOBs to get a good photo of, and it took a lot of sharpening and noise reduction in PhotoShop to get some results – and I still wasn’t happy with a lot of it. The lighting in many of these galleries is dim, to better preserve the art, and flash photography is a big no-no. And breaking rules is, well, a bad idea to put it mildly. After all they have those nice Swiss guards with sharp objects, and their own jail. Plus, y’know, the threat of damnation and all that.

Conquest of Paganism

I love the minimalist nature of this. An old broken sculpture in front of a crucifix; it tells a story, but does it without distractions.

Throwdown

And now an action piece – Emperor Constantine triumphing over his foes!

And I will start with the thing that I think is of utmost importance: whenever humanly possible, scout your shots in the daylight. That way, you will know where the hazards are, you will have a chance to pre-visualize the compositions you want, and you’ll generally not have to blunder about like a drunken hippo in the dark. Albeit a hippo with very fancy electronics. Cyber-hippo artist, what an odd image THAT makes in my mind.

But enough of that! We’re here to create art at night after all. So bring along these:

Batteries, batteries, and more batteries. Especially if doing star trails or in cold weather, as both suck batteries like nobody’s business.

I sincerely doubt you can hold a camera steady for 30 minutes. And if you can, go be a surgeon and buy some prints from me.

Remote release (cable or infrared). Again, total stability is the key.

Timer – this can be stopwatch, wristwatch, smartphone, what have you.

Light source. You’ll need it between shots and getting to/from shooting. Headlamps are great because it keeps both hands free.

Some way to amuse yourself during long shots. Deck of cards, smartphone, good company, Chinese finger trap, and so on.

But don’t bother with a lot of filters, especially a polarizer, which usually drops 1 stop of light and therefore means double the exposure time. 20 minutes is long, but 40’s worse.

Once you have the shot set, take a first exposure. Typically I’ll open the aperture to maximum, crank the ISO into the stratosphere, and set the shutter around 30 seconds. Then take a shot and see what you get. From there, dial in the shutter until you get the desired exposure (takes a few shots normally), and then alter the shutter and ISO to get as low an ISO as you want and/or can get. There is some math here – it’s all about powers of two, doubling and halving things.

So for example is f/4 ISO 3200 and 30s is right, then f/4, ISO 100, and 16 min will be the same exposure.

Yosemite Falls at Night

Bear also in mind, to freeze stars I find it necessary to get speeds under 20 seconds. Which means get a wide-aperture lens so you don’t have to get a lot of grain from high ISO.

The Milky Way

Once again, to make the point: safety first. Tell someone where you’re going and when you’ll be back. And if you’re going somewhere that has hazards like bears, bison, drug-addled squatters, angry 3 year olds etc. do be extra cautious, and if humanly possible take company along.

And have fun! But don’t try to make money infringing copyrights, even if it is wicked cool to play with glow sticks.

Your Powers Are Weak, Old Man

Future posts on this topic are likely to involve details on star trails and light painting. And a really fun one I took last week while out of town :)Happy shooting!